The Cinematic Sublime: Negative Pleasures, Structuring Absences

This interdisciplinary volume is dedicated to exploring the idea of the cinematic sublime by bringing together the disciplines of film studies and aesthetics to examine cinema and cinematic experience. Explores the idea of ‘the sublime’ in cinema from a variety of perspectives; the essays range in focus from early cinema, through classical Hollywood, documentary, avant-garde and art cinema traditions, and on to contemporary digital cinema. The book aims to apply the discussion of the sublime in philosophy to cinema and to interrogate the ways in which cinema engages with this tradition.

Offers new and exciting insights into how cinema engages with traditional historical and aesthetic discourse. Original and wide-ranging, this clear and coherent volume is a useful resource for both post-graduate students and established scholars interested in the interrelations between film and philosophy. The range of material covered in the individual essays makes this a wide-ranging and very useful introduction to the topic.

A significant new contribution to the literature on Film-Philosophy. What sets this reader apart from the existing books on the subject is the wider scope. It embraces both philosophers and film scholars to consider films from throughout film history in light of theories of the sublime from throughout the history of Philosophy. In doing so it aims to demonstrate the diverse value of sublime approaches (versus a singular definition and philosophical perspective) to a wider range of films than has previously been considered. 

An original and stimulating collection of essays contributing new insights into the crossover between historical and aesthetic approaches to contemporary cinema and cinematic experience.

The main readership will be academic markets including film studies and philosophy, and academics with an interest in the legacies of Burke and Kant on aesthetics. Useful for teaching aesthetics through cinematic illustration and application.

Appropriate to final year undergraduate and postgraduate students with an interest in ideas at the boundaries of contemporary film studies.

Nathan Carroll is an associate professor in the Department of Communication, Theatre, and Art at The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, MN, where he teaches a variety of genre, auteur, and film topics courses within the Communication Major Film Concentration. In addition, he teaches courses on media criticism and sublime aesthetics as connected with cinema. He holds a BA (philosophy and political science) from Gustavus Adolphus College, an MA in philosophy (aesthetics) from the University of York (UK), and a combined Ph.D. in the Departments of Communication and Culture and American Studies from Indiana University, Bloomington. His research interests include new media, archive theory, and intersections between philosophy and film studies. He has published in The Velvet Light Trap, The Moving Image, the online journal Movement, and the Quarterly Review of Film and Video.